The ins and outs of living in Puerto Rico

Open Mobile Cell Phone Service

Open Mobile’s cell phone service comes from a small local company, not knowing a lot about it I went over to the mall and went to their kiosk. There was a young woman there who was representing the company, so I decided to ask her questions about the plan coverage signal strength etc. now I don’t think that my experience with this particular employee was necessarily representative of the actual coverage and the service you will get from this companies cell phone signal, however she didn’t really seem to know anything.

Open Mobile prides itself in being a company that has no long-term agreement, meaning that you have to sign a two-year contract with them like the other companies. However, this means that you have to pay more for the actual phone plus a lot of activation and other fees that you may not have to pay when you sign a two-year agreement.

When I asked her about the coverage in Puerto Rico she just referred me to the map that she had in front of her (which shows that most of the island is covered), then I asked her if that was for voice or data, she said that was for voice only. I proceeded then to ask about the data and she did not know how the coverage was, she did however tell me that the 4G coverage is only in the San Juan Metro area, of course don’t tell you that in any of the brochures they have.

Open Mobile is a very small local company and its plans reflect that, calling to the US is considered long distance although some of their plans cover calls to the US. If you were to go to the US and you have Open Mobile it is considered roaming, which can also be included in your plan but data is limited to 250 MB of download only, not sure what happens after that they charge you for the data were not, but I do know is that you get one or 2 GB of data in Puerto Rico at 3G or 4G speeds and then after that they slow your connection down to what they call 1x.

I know someone that has Open Mobile and she says her cell phone service is good, doesn’t really complain, it gets coverage wherever she goes even inside her house which is of course made of concrete, so that is a good sign, but then again she doesn’t need all the bells and whistles, she doesn’t only smart phone either so is purely for voice. It’s cheap, it works, she has signal wherever she goes, and she does not have a two-year agreement to tie her down, so all in all it works just right for her.

When it comes to their website: the don’t have an English website, it is all in Spanish surf you don’t know any Spanish you’re going to have trouble understanding their plans and services. Also, when I spoke to the sales representative at the kiosk I actually started speaking in English, and she looked at me with her eyes wide open,very frightened, she had no idea what to do,so then I pretended I got a little confused and started speaking Spanish.

So to wrap things up, Open Mobile is mainly for the type of person that does not like the two-year agreements and who will likely not need cell phone service outside of the island.

9 Comments

I am having trouble with paying my bill with the debit card over the phone because I don’t know Spanish every month I have to find somebody to do it for me if you could just tell me the numbers to push to pay with my MasterCard debit card thank you

Open Mobile has the worst internet service in the island. I have to call the company almost every day so they can reset the system in order to connect to their service. After resetting the system it doesn’t run at a normal velocity, it is very slow and freezes all the time, besides continuously disconnecting and having to reconnect. It will also tell you that there’s no internet connection. On top of that I ran out of data at the middle of the month without being able to use it. Every time I call I have less data without consuming it. Open Mobile customer representative will tell you they can’t do anything else to solve the connection problems and they will try to convince the client that the problem is in the modem and not in their overloaded system. Even do I have taken the modem to the store several times and they have certified that the modem is working and has no damage, they will insist in blaming the modem. End of story, no longer a client of Open Mobile.

I am sorry, I am not Open Mobile customer support, so I don’t have the answer for that. What I do know is that to call the Dominican Republic, you have to dial 1 then the area code, which is either one of 809/829/849, then the phone number.

You may need to call Open Mobile’s customer support and ask them if this doesn’t work.